BPC00524

This image is one of three details of A Perspective View of Brighthelmstone and of the Sea Coast as far as the Isle of Wight (BPC00492), a first edition copperplate engraving is by P Canot after James Lambert. Published by Lambert in Lewes and Robert Sayer in London, 1765. Picture is courtesy of the Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

In the left foreground is Edward Baker’s Circulating Library, opened just a year or two before this print was published, and to the right of that is the narrow building of the bandstand. In the centre of the scene there is what looks like a gap in the building line, with some lean-to sheds in a spare plot of land, and it was on this site the hotelier Samuel Shergold built the first house, c1769, that became Marlborough House, once the Duke purchased it in 1771.